WAIS databases typically contain documents/articles upon a specific subject or area.
Databases are Indexed on Article Content (words).
Distributed (anonymous) Database Locations
WAIS databases are available throughout the Internet.
Most WAIS databases are available to all Internet users.
WAIS Search Terms/Fields
Questions: contains the search criteria word.s
pertinent topic terms
Sources: contains the WAIS databases to be searched.
Full Text Indexes (Every word in a document is fully indexed in a WAIS database.)
Results: contains documents' locations and weights.
Normalized weighted document scores
Best Match Score = 1000
Weight = Sum for each word [ ((count number of each word occurences) / (max num of each word occurences)) * (word 'worth' weight) ]
No Boolean Operators (No document content filtering -- must search the full database index)
No Contextual Ordering of Search Words
Relevance Feedback: allows words in located documents to be used as further search criteria
WAIS Clients
Database Sources
Server Directories: index of wais databases
Search directory-of-servers database at quake.think.com Note: The Quake company has been sold, until the purchaser, AOL Productions decides how to make the directory-of-servers wais database available again links to quake.think.com will remain inactive.
Select database (document) and Add Source to search on a specific database(s).
Web Search Engine - WAIS Based
LYCOS
The LYCOS Web search engine is based upon a WAIS engine. Search results are reported with the same Normalized weighted document scores.
